Thursday, November 06, 2008

Genetically modified genocide

Here's how that works.India gets IMF loans in exchange for allowing western companies like Monsanto access to the billion strong Indian markets.Government seed banks ban traditional seeds to promote uptake of GM seeds.Farmers are pitched the very expensive "magic seeds", Monsanto's BT Cotton.Farmers take out loans to buy them.Drought. Too bad because GM seeds require twice the water of traditional seeds.Crops die and farmers are unable to save seeds to plant next year because of course there are no seeds.Farmers takes out additional loans to buy more seeds.More drought plus parasitic bollworms. Crop failure.Farmers can't pay off loans. Lose land. Suicide.

Monsanto official : "Suicides have always been part of rural Indian life."

Nice. And for what? Are more people fed?No, because GM crops produce lower yields than traditional plantings.So the entire purpose of GM is so that a few multinat corpses can own the entire food chain.

Prince Charles is on the case "setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM."But Prince Charles has his own problems at home :

"Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them.And they show that the leaders want "agricultural representatives" and "industry" – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists"

Currently GM is only grown on .1% - that's point one percent - of agricultural land in Europe : none in Britain, France has suspended cultivation, and resistance is growing in Spain and Portugal.

And Canada? Well, we're riddled with the stuff - one of the world's largest producers of GMs.A seldom mentioned aspect of the recent listeriosis story was the Ministry of Trade's decision to allow industry to oversee its own labelling, meaning we're unlikely to become better informed of which foods are GM any time soon.

At present GM food labelling in Canada is voluntary.I'd like to propose a genocide label.

The opposition to GM labelling is so frustrating and puzzling. Why not agree to letting people know what's in their food? That way, each consumer could make an informed buying decision at the grocery store.The opponents of labelling clearly have contempt for consumer rights.

I agree that Monsanto et al are afraid of labeling because consumers might very well reject their products in droves. But the way the whole agri-food business has been concentrated, it's hard for consumers to decipher what's what these days.

It makes you wonder what is stopping certain companies from sticking a huge fat announcement on their products that says they are GMO free? It certainly worked with "fair trade", "recycled", "organic", "fat free", "cholesteral free", etc. So why not for GMOs? Is it that they can't actually verify all their ingredients?

If so, that is frightening. That also explains how so many diverse pet food brands ended up recalling contaminated food that contained ingredients traced back to China.

Our biggest security threat is our food these days thanks to how agri-business has structured our food supply.